William Matson Roth, a socially progressive businessman with deep Bay Area roots who left a lasting mark on the San Francisco of today, died on Thursday at his home in Petaluma. He was 97.

Among his achievements was Ghirardelli Square - the transformation of a historic chocolate factory across from Aquatic Park into a collection of shops and restaurants that spent decades as one of the city's top attractions and was imitated in cities across the country.

But the role of developer was only one that Mr. Roth played throughout a wide-ranging career. He was a Cabinet-level trade ambassador and ran for governor of California. He helped found two publishing firms and later the Ploughshares Fund, an advocacy group working for the elimination of nuclear weapons. He also served 16 years on the University of California Board of Regents, where he was a vocal opponent of Gov. Ronald Reagan.

Trade negotiator

All this and the family business - a shipping line founded by his grandfather, so successful that Mr. Roth grew up on the Filoli estate in Woodside, 654 acres around a Georgian-style mansion that now is open to the public and owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

"He had a finger in so many interesting pies," said Michael Blumenthal, a friend since they were both appointed by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to be trade negotiators for tariff reform. "He had the courage to be unconventional, in a very good sense."

His term as a UC regent demonstrated this well.

Mr. Roth, who graduated from Yale, was appointed to the post by Gov. Edmund G. "Pat" Brown in 1961, an honor that he then called "particularly challenging." But the challenge grew exponentially after Brown was replaced in Sacramento in 1967 by Reagan, a conservative whose approach to education was described as "high simplicity" by the liberal Mr. Roth on one occasion.

When Reagan stepped down from his post as ex-officio regent in 1974 as he prepared to leave office, Mr. Roth and another regent showed up late in order not to vote in favor of a resolution praising the two-term governor.

That same year, Mr. Roth ran for governor, finishing fourth in the Democratic primary. A Chronicle profile at the time noted his "wry self-mockery" - and the comment of San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto that Mr. Roth would be a splendid governor "if only he could find someone to appoint him."

That didn't happen, but appointments aplenty came to the grandson of the founder of Matson Navigation Co., now based in Hawaii with no remaining connection to the family. He was president of the board of what now is the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and a director of the American Civil Liberties Union. He served during the 1960s as president of SPUR, the planning advocacy group, and headed task forces on urban education.

National sensation

But Mr. Roth's most memorable accomplishment was Ghirardelli Square, now seen as an atmospheric bookend to Fisherman's Wharf but in the early 1960s as an outmoded factory of aged brick at the foot of Russian Hill.

Mr. Roth took a cue from the restoration of similar though smaller structures in Jackson Square, and in 1963 embarked on an effort to create a retail complex that he told The Chronicle "will cater to the huge new apartment house developments nearby." Instead, after an imaginative and thorough rebirth done with landscape architect Lawrence Halprin and the architectural firm Wurster Bernardi and Emmons, it opened in 1964 and became a regional, then national, sensation.

"Bill once told me, 'I'm not in business to make money,' " Blumenthal said Friday. " 'I'm in business to do socially useful things, and to show that they can be profitable.' "

Though self-effacing in public, Mr. Roth enjoyed good living at home. This included a house in Sausalito, Blumenthal recalled, with a wooden bath tub on the mezzanine that looked out on the bay - and down on the living room.

Mr. Roth is survived by his wife, Joan; daughters Anna of San Francisco, Jessica of Majorca and Maggie of Petaluma' five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. No memorial arrangements have been made.